Archive – Page 322 – Astronomy Now

White dwarf star may have shredded passing planet

19 April 2015 Astronomy Now

The destruction of a planet may sound like the stuff of science fiction, but a team of astronomers has found evidence that this may have happened in an ancient globular cluster of stars at the edge of the Milky Way galaxy.

Earth was grown from millimetre-sized stones

18 April 2015 Astronomy Now

Researchers can now explain how asteroids are formed. According to a new study led by Lund University in Sweden, our own planet also has its origins in the same process — a cosmic ocean of millimetre-sized particles that once orbited the young Sun.

Dawn glimpses north pole of dwarf planet Ceres

17 April 2015 Astronomy Now

Having spent more than a month orbiting on the dark side of dwarf planet Ceres, NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has returned the highest-resolution views to date of this intriguing world’s sunlit north pole.

Massive galaxies died from the inside out

16 April 2015 Keith Cooper

Some of the biggest galaxies in the Universe started to shut down their star-formation from the inside-out ten billion years ago, according to new observations made using the Very Large Telescope in Chile and the Hubble Space Telescope.

First signs of self-interacting dark matter found?

16 April 2015 Astronomy Now

Observations of colliding galaxies made with ESO’s Very Large Telescope and the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope may, for the first time, have detected dark matter interacting with other dark matter in a way other than through the force of gravity.

Celebrating Hubble: A raging star

15 April 2015 Astronomy Now

As we celebrate 25 years of the Hubble Space Telescope, here’s another gem from the archives. The binary star system known as eta Carinae, part of the Trumpler 16 open cluster in the Carina Nebula.

Mimas by Saturnshine

14 April 2015 Astronomy Now

Although we are used to seeing Saturn’s moons lit directly by the Sun, sometimes we can catch them illuminated by “Saturnshine.”

Rosetta keeps its distance from awakening comet

13 April 2015 Stephen Clark

Mission controllers are rethinking a series of close-up comet flybys planned for Europe’s Rosetta spacecraft after a haze of dust around the comet’s central nucleus led to navigation errors during a close encounter in late March.

Universe expanding more slowly than previously thought?

13 April 2015 Astronomy Now

A University of Arizona-led team of astronomers found that the type of supernovae commonly used to measure distances in the universe fall into distinct populations not recognised before. The findings have implications for our understanding of how fast the universe has been expanding since the Big Bang.

Diverse destinations considered for new interplanetary probe

12 April 2015 Stephen Clark

Science teams from across the United States have submitted 28 proposals for missions to explore the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, touch the asteroid-like satellites orbiting Mars, visit unseen worlds and hunt for objects that could strike Earth one day.